# value of POST variable in PHP CURL - php

Question

I'm creating a function to untilize NameCheap's API for registering domain names. The registration process worked out smoothly, now I'm looking to set the proper DNS Hosts.
When I create a pure POST request with something like POSTMAN this works fine and returns the expected XML response. However when I try to pass the data through PHP's CURL functions it breaks. I've narrowed the problem the the '#' symbol that needs to be passed to the DNS Host. If i put anything else there the request goes through. I've tried to url_encode the symbol but the API does not accept that.
Any suggestions?
public function setDNSHost($name, $server){
list($domain,$tld) = explode('.',$name,2);
$request = $this->request_URL;
$curl = curl_init();
$args['ApiUser'] = $this->API_User;
$args['ApiKey'] = $this->API_Key;
$args['UserName'] = $this->API_User;
$args['Command'] = 'namecheap.domains.dns.setHosts';
$args['ClientIP'] = $this->Client_IP;
$args['SLD'] = $domain;
$args['TLD'] = $tld;
$args['HostName1'] = utf8_encode('#');
$args['RecordType1'] = 'A';
$args['Address1'] = $server;
$args['HostName2'] = 'www';
$args['RecordType2'] = 'CNAME';
$args['Address2'] = $name;
$args['HostName3'] = '*';
$args['RecordType3'] = 'CNAME';
$args['Address3'] = $name;
curl_setopt_array($curl, array(
CURLOPT_URL => $request,
CURLOPT_USERAGENT => 'API',
// CURLOPT_FAILONERROR => 1,
CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION => 1,
CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER => 1,
CURLOPT_CUSTOMREQUEST => "POST",
CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS => $args,
CURLOPT_TIMEOUT => 15
));
$response = curl_exec($curl);
curl_close($curl);
// $oXML = new SimpleXMLElement($response);
return $response;
}

Answer 1

Some caracters are not allowed to be in the string. To avoid such problems you could use http_build_query on your data before you use the curl function.